


Sins

by Jaromo99



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27641590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaromo99/pseuds/Jaromo99
Summary: Ronan comes out to Declan about his relationship with Adam.I got kind of stuck on the relationship switch between the brothers between the two series. Like, Declan and Ronan seem so much softer with each other? So I imagined a few ways that that could have happened, so here's one.I don't know what this is! Sorry for all the out of character lines. I wrote it in under an hour y'all. I might come back and actually edit it eventually. I suck at writing dialogue, sorry!
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 7
Kudos: 116





	Sins

Ronan watched as Adam’s back rose and fell with his breaths, the scatter of freckles covering Adam’s shoulders and back illuminated by the sunlight shining through the sheer blue curtains onto the bed. Downstairs Opal dropped something, causing a loud, clanging sound to ring throughout the house. The next sound was that of hooves running across the hardwood, fleeing the scene. All was quiet for several seconds. Adam’s breath stopped for a beat before picking back up. Ronan thought he must have woken up, but he didn’t move. False alarm?

A minute later, the bedroom door creaked open half an inch. An inch. Three inches. A little nose poked in followed by the remainder of a face. The face looked at Ronan, who made a disapproving face. “You’re lucky you didn’t wake him up, you midget.”

Adam’s voice, muffled by a pillow, said, “she didn’t”. Oh. Not a false alarm then.

Opal ran, leaving the door open behind her. Without the door to serve to baffle some of the noise, the clicking of Opal darting down the stairs was evident. “What the fuck, Parrish.” Not a question, not a demand for an answer. Just a plea for Adam to get enough sleep for once in his goddamn life. 

“She didn’t wake me up, I’ve been awake for a while. I didn’t want to wake you if you were still asleep.” This time less muffled, since Adam had turned his face so it wasn’t directly into the pillow anymore. 

“How do you breathe with your face in the pillow like that? Seems like it’d be hard to get enough oxygen into that Harvard brain of yours.” Adam’s acceptance letter came the week before and he couldn’t stop bringing it up whenever possible. Apparently it had rubbed off on his boyfriend, as well. 

Instead of offering an answer, Adam rolled over to face Ronan and smiled. And that smile, that smile. Ronan had often grappled with himself over the concept of God. To ask for faith in something so void of proof was difficult with all of the evils Ronan had seen, but That Smile was something he would never cease to worship. If there was ever something worth fighting for it was Adam, and Ronan never backed down from a fight. 

He leaned in and kissed him, soft and gentle in a way that less than a year ago he never thought would ever have been possible. But it was possible, because through hellfire and brimstone, crisis after crisis, and loss after loss, somehow this boy, this wonderful boy, with his twenty year plan and all those freckles that Ronan could never get enough enough of, loved him. To feel so worthy of love was a thought he had washed down the drain in the shower after the police cleared him to wash his father’s blood and brains off his hands two years ago.

Adam pulled his head back to retreat further into the pillows, with his hands grabbing the sides of Ronan’s face to bring him with. “You need to brush your teeth.”

“You kissed me, stop complaining,” Ronan responded, but there was no fire in his voice, no drive except that to keep kissing him and never stop. Adam and Blue once had a heated conversation about the political reasons that companies pretend to clean up oil spills. They can never be cleaned, not completely. There will always be some left over; toxic, dangerous, Flammable. Once that match drops, it never stops burning, it can only spread, engulfing everything around them, snuffing the oxygen and suffocating everything of importance. To be a person in that ocean would be a life’s sentence, no escaping the fires that would quickly overcome you. Being with Adam was like that. Never ceasing to fully bring those moments to the forefront of his attention. 

The front door opened downstairs, Opal laughed in a high, screechy way before the familiar sound of hooves clattered again through the house. It was only Opal. 

“Ronan!” a voice said. Not Opal’s voice.

“Shit!” a voice said. Ronan’s voice. He jumped off the bed, throwing the blanket off him. “Why is Declan here?”

Adam sat up in the bed. “You have breakfast with him and Matthew. I reminded you last night. I didn’t realize what time it was.” 

“Ronan! Are you still in bed?”

“No, give me a minute!”

Adam stayed where he was in the bed. “Have you told him yet?”

Ronan glared at him. “No. I was going to today. That’s why I had him drive out on a Saturday.” He said it as though it was supposed to be obvious. Maybe it was obvious. God, Adam had been running on too little sleep for too much time.

Ronan ripped through the room, grabbing yesterday’s clothes off the ground where they had been discarded and scattered the previous night after Adam had come home from his three day trip home with Gansey. Thankfully Declan’s footsteps up the stairs weren’t as careful as Opal’s were earlier that morning. Ronan picked up his pants and started putting them on. Declan hit the top of the stairs and started down the hallway. Ronan grabbed a shirt and started toward the door to intercept his brother. Right as Declan came to the door, Ronan started to push it closed from when Opal had peeked in earlier, but not quite in time. A shoe pushed through, stopping it from closing all the way. 

“Seriously?” Declan asked. “Why schedule something if you aren’t planning on being ready?” He tried to push the door open.

Ronan stopped him, shoving his foot on the other side of the door. He pushed his shoulder forward to block Declan’s view into the room. “I said to give me a minute.” He gestured to Adam behind his back, a wild one that showed that he didn’t quite know what he wanted Adam to do about the situation. Adam took it as a sign to make himself invisible and scooted to the opposite side of the bed to get into the bathroom without detection. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you, let me open the door.” Ronan let the bedroom door open. The bathroom door clicked shut. Declan glanced toward the sound. “Oh.” His eyes went from the source of the noise, down to Ronan’s unzipped pants, then up to his neck where a hickey serving as evidence to last night’s activities was still bare. “I’ll, uh. I’ll wait downstairs.” He left, letting Ronan shut the door to get dressed in peace. 

Adam opened the bathroom door and took the shirt out of Ronan’s hands. “That shirt is mine. Yours is on the nightstand.” He looked at Ronan. “You still planning on brushing your teeth?”

“Fuck off.” Ronan went into his en suite, emerging a few minutes later to find Adam, now fully dressed, sitting on the bed. Ronan didn’t say anything as he walked past and out the door to go downstairs, leaving Adam behind to do whatever the fuck Adam was going to do.

He went downstairs, stepping around Matthew and Opal, who were playing with the light switch trying to time the lights to a song Matthew’s phone was playing quietly. Matthew and Opal’s abilities to find joy in stupid things never cease to annoy him. “Hi, Ronan!” Matthew said brightly.

“Ronan.” Declan said not brightly. Ronan turned to walk the opposite direction into the kitchen. “Ronan.” He said again, a little more annoyed, following him. Ronan reached the kitchen and Declan grabbed the collar of his shirt. Ronan grunted and pulled away and Declan allowed him to pull his shirt free from his grip. “Have you seen this place? You can’t just bring random people here!”

“Who said I had anyone random here?” Ronan asked with his favorite sarcastic snark.

“I don’t know. How about we ask the girl upstairs?”

“I’m not talking to you about this.” Ronan grabbed his keys off the counter. “I’ll meet you at the diner.”

Declan grabbed Ronan’s keys out of his hand and threw them on the ground behind him. Matthew looked up as if that was the first sign that something was going on. “Why don’t we go together? That way you don’t have to drive, Ronan, I know this is earlier than you’re usually up.” Ronan looked at Matthew, who had stepped out of the hallway and was looking at his brothers. And since Matthew asked, Matthew got his way like he always did. It was hard, if not impossible, to say no to him. 

So they went outside, got into Declan’s car, and drove away in silence at the speed equivalent to a slightly caffeinated snail. 

And that’s the way Declan and Ronan stayed with each other the whole time. No words were exchanged. They got to the diner. They ordered their food. They ate their food. Matthew chatted their ears off, but Ronan and Declan said no more than was necessary. 

After the bill came, Ronan pulled out his phone. He had a single text from Adam marked 26 minutes prior.  _ Do you want me to be gone when you come back? _ He shot back a one word response, put his phone in his pocket, and that was that. Six minutes later the waitress came back and took the green tray with Declan’s card. Ronan cut Matthew off in the middle of a vivid story about his friend (Oliver? Lucas? Whatever.) getting knocked off the raft right into some rocks last summer when they went rafting. “Matthew. Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

He stopped his story. “No?”

Declan this time. “Yes you do, go.” Matthew took the hint and got up to go the diner’s bathroom without another word. Once he was far enough away, Declan spoke up again. “So are you gonna tell me what this is actually about now?”

Ronan took a drink. He swallowed. He opened his mouth to speak, then took another drink instead. “I...Do you remember…” looked down and took yet another drink. For someone so keen on not lying, this seemed like a great time to start. “I don’t want you to hate me like I know dad would have.”

This was obviously not what Declan was expecting. “Dad would never have hated you. You were his favorite. Ask anyone.” He said it with that tone that one would use to talk to a stray puppy or a traumatized child. The same tone he used with Matthew when he hugged him after Kavinsky’s Fourth of July party. 

“Fuck you, you don’t know anything. You may know more about him, but I knew him better.” Ronan’s voice was poisonous, the type that would break anyone. Anyone except, it seems, someone who knew Ronan. Someone who knew that that anger was reserved strictly for those who he cared for a great deal. Declan remained silent, not knowing how to approach. “Do you remember Matthew’s eighth birthday?”

Declan didn’t say anything for a long time. Whether he was trying to remember or desperately trying not to break the fragile ground he had gained, Ronana didn't know. “No.” It sufficed. He didn’t remember. 

Ronan looked down again, then back up. “Matthew wanted to invite one of his friends. Dad said no, of course. He said that the only way she could come to the house is if they got married, because when you’re married you can keep each other’s secrets.”

Matthew came out of the bathroom just in time to hear Declan interject, “I swear to God Ronan, if you got drunk and married someone-” 

“Fuck off, of course I didn’t!” He stopped. Matthew retreated outside, “Anyway, he said that the only ones who could be trusted with some secrets are wives and sons, and that he knew that the women we married would be able to keep those secrets by how happy they made us.”

He stopped talking and didn’t start again. “What is this relevant to?” Declan asked.

“I was getting there.” Silence. The waitress came back. Declan smiled while he accepted his card back. The receipt had a phone number written on it in purple ink. “It just made me realize a lot about dad. For me, religion is a means to an end. For dad, it was so much more.” 

For someone who talked so much about sins, Niall sure did commit a lot of them.

Ronan stopped talking again, so Declan jumped in. “Are you going to tell me, or do you want me to guess?” No answer. “Whatever it is, he wouldn’t have hated you for it.”

Ronan yelled “Really? Because being gay sure seems like something he would have tried his hardest to damn mel for!” Everything suddenly got very quiet, very fast. The women eating at the table beside them got up to leave. 

Ronan didn’t want his father’s approval. Even if Niall was alive, Ronan never would have gotten it. Even Declan couldn’t argue that. Here was Ronan, eighteen years old and desperate for someone, anyone, to tell him that it was okay. After a very long minute, Declan decided that Ronan was waiting for him to speak first. “I don’t know what dad would think,” a blatant lie, “but I don’t care.”

They sat like that for several minutes. Matthew, who had been waiting outside, watching them through the window, finally decided it was safe to rejoin. Even he took Ronan’s cold demeanor as a signal to stay  quiet. Then, finally, he said, “Can we go now? It's getting kind of busy.” So they did. 


End file.
